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Principle 4. Additional academic support should be integrated with gateway college-level course content — as a co-requisite, not a pre-requisite.
Principle Four opens the question of what needs to be done for students who enter college with skills so low that it is not likely they can benefit from default placement in a college-level course. The honest answer is that we don’t know. Whatever the eventual solutions, student supports will need to be a central feature. Principle Four focuses on “additional academic support,” but I argue that “additional support” needs to go far beyond the...

The first of the Core Principles states: Every student’s postsecondary education begins with an intake process to choose an academic direction and identify the support needed to pass relevant credit-bearing gateway courses in the first-year.
This dry, bureaucratic statement conceals a call for radical transformation of the entire intake and advisement process at community colleges across the nation. Historically, the intake process was designed to weed out students deemed “not ready” for college-level work. Such students were directed into developmental education courses that could take...

There are startling statistics that we can no longer ignore. A child born into a family in the lowest income quintile has a 4% chance of moving into the top quintile. Half of black Americans are born poor and stay poor. Most black, middle-class children are downwardly mobile.
These data points reflect the growing inequality, lack of economic mobility, and increasing numbers of Americans living in poverty and insecurity. Like many of you, Jobs for the Future is doubling our efforts to change this deeply troubling and painful reality in the land of opportunity.
At JFF we are committed to...

By Mamadou Ndiaye and Rebecca E. Wolfe, for Phi Delta Kappan
Science teacher Cierra Swopes has a unique perspective on taking college courses while still in high school. In 2008, she was in the second graduating class of Dayton Early College Academy (DECA). Six years later, Swopes got the job of her dreams: teaching chemistry at this nontraditional charter high school in Dayton, Ohio.
“As an early college student, I was privileged enough to graduate from high school with an associate degree,” said Swopes, who started taking college courses at Sinclair Community College during her freshman...

Lexi Barrett is JFF's new director of national education policy.
Over the last few months, the Early College High School design earned remarkable recognition and support from leaders in Congress and the U.S. Department of Education (ED). ED’s experimental sites authority and the passage of the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) opened new federal funding sources to support school districts looking to implement Early College Designs.
In October 2015, ED launched an experiment to expand access to college coursework for high school students from low-income backgrounds. Through this pilot program...